Early Early Early: Start Publicity Early

Originally published on the Loft’s blogThe Writers’ Block, 4/8/13
Linda White

I can’t tell you how often I’ve received messages or calls from authors whose books are already out, and they just don’t know what to do to give it the attention it deserves.

No bones about it—your book will fare better if you start your publicity efforts long before it’s published. This holds true whether you’re self-publishing or publishing via a traditional publishing house. A year before publication is not too early. This has always been my mantra: Early Early Early.

What can you do this far ahead of time? This is the time for you to build relationships, get to know who does what, and spread that word of mouth.

Goals

First, determine what your goals are. This will feed your efforts, and possibly your budget. Know this about yourself: where do you want your book to take you? Do you want to be the next diva of romance, the next thriller icon, or the expert on your topic? Do you want your book to function as a gateway to speaking engagements, or otherwise help other aspects of your life? Do you want to simply get your story out there? Decide what your goals and expectations are, at least in the beginning. They may change.

Once you have determined that—and it might take some soul-searching—then you know how much effort, time, and money you want to put into this. Your personal situation may also come into play, but no matter how broke or overworked you are, there are things you can do to promote your book.

Social Aspects

Include as many people as possible in the journey of publishing your book. If you are not on social media, then setting up a simple Facebook page will go a long way towards helping to promote your book. (You need to set up a personal page before setting up a fan page.) The other platforms, such as Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn, can be helpful too, but Facebook seems to be the one most applicable to book publicity. You can be visual here; you can share articles related to your book topic; and you can list events and other news that will let people know what you’re doing.

Think of all the steps involved in producing a book. Did you have a hand in the cover design? Are you trying to come up with a common 19th-century Irish name for one of your characters? Do you need to find information on an historical method of doing something (whether it’s making coffee, building a boat or sewing a shirt)? Believe it or not, social media can be a tool for all of this.

As soon as your book cover is available, use it. Have some bookmarks or postcards made (maybe your publisher offers this), and hand them out everywhere. A year in advance is not too early to get started on this. Get to know your local booksellers and librarians. Go to local literary events and meet people. Always carry a little supply of these bookmarks or postcards with you. As publication gets closer, ask if you can leave a little stack on the counters at these places you have come to know. Remember, you belong in this community; these are your peeps. And the more of them you know, the more support you will receive when the book is published.

Get Help Where You Need It

What else can you do early on? Determine if you want any help with various aspects of your book. Even authors who are traditionally published might hire an outside editor, publicist, or website person. If you are publishing with a traditional house, find out, with as much detail as possible, what it is they will do for you. Will they have a dedicated website for you? How many review copies will they send out? Will they cover the costs of traveling for events, a launch event, or perhaps a book tour? Will they submit your book for awards and for appearances at book festivals? What will their focus be in terms of publicity? Will there be a budget for any advertising, and if so, where will that be spent?

Once you have as much of that information as you can gather, you should be able to see where the holes are. You then need to fill those holes. A complete marketing campaign for a book should include advertising, promotion and publicity, and have components in print, broadcasting, and online. If any of those areas are lacking attention, you should either be prepared to work on that or find someone else who can help you.

Looking at this situation well ahead of your publication date will help you avoid that scramble or “horse is out of the barn” feeling once the book is published. It is true, in most cases, that the majority of the publicity will hit in the first three months of the life of your book. And setting this up needs to start at least six months before that publication date.

So yes, you can do lots with book publicity before the book is published. And it doesn’t stop then. But that’s another story.

2 thoughts on “Early Early Early: Start Publicity Early”

What a great idea to actually think about my goals–I’ve read a lot about traditional vs. self-publishing and this is the first time I’ve asked myself this question. (No solid answers yet, but thanks for asking, Linda! Really enjoyed your Loft class last spring.).

You may have heard that in certain circles (largely academic), you must publish or perish.

Well, isn’t the same thing true of any writer? And if you are primarily a writer, and not, say, one who concerns themselves with the esoteric functions of some industry or industrial complex, then you really must publish or perish.

Submit or die

And what do you need to do first, before you can publish? That’s right. Submit. So really, it’s Submit or Die. And that can mean several things.
You can submit your work to journals, websites, contests and the like. Or you can submit queries to agents, publishers or magazines to publish your articles. Really, the how or what doesn’t matter (I mean, yes, ultimately it does matter), because the bottom line is that you must submit something in order to get started.

There are many people who write and do not submit. They exist in a netherworld of anonymity, known as writers only to themselves and close friends and family (and sometimes, not even that). Sometimes, they think they are not good enough. Sometimes, they don’t think their work is ready or they say they simply don’t have time. There are as many reasons for not submitting as there are writers out there.

But the end result is that only those who submit get published. And those who talk about writing but do nothing about submitting are doing a disservice to their writing.

“So I played softball in high school for four years and utterly sucked at it. Like I was embarrassingly bad. That said, I stuck with it. Something about that practice of persistence in spite of continuous failure *read rejection letters*, has fully prepared me for my life as a writer. Thank You, Softball” – Sagirah Shahid

Recently, I saw a post by a poet friend on Facebook, telling how her experience with being bad at softball – but sticking with it – helped to prepare her for life as a writer. She graciously agreed to let me share it. Resiliency. Gotta have it.

But sometimes it’s easier to do other things, and no one will really notice, right? Well, that’s where a support group comes in. Encouragement and accountability might be the things you need to get yourself on a submitting track.

There are some who say that a true writer must write every day; but also some who say that you should just write whenever you can – but above all, make time for it. I have belonged to two groups over the past 9 or 10 months that have helped me do just that. They both offer Encouragement and Accountability. But no judgment.

The first one that I joined, and I would suggest everyone do this, goes along with the principle of writing every day. It is a monthly writing challenge, centered around a hashtag on Twitter, and I wrote about it here. The second one is a Facebook group that operates on the make-time-for-it option, called #1kTuesday, run by the talented and generous Molly Beth Griffin. Both encourage writing and have another thing in common: no judgment. We all have our demons. But we can still celebrate our successes, even the smallest ones, because small successes tend to pile up to be big successes.

Facebook group #SubmitSunday

What I would like to do is build up a similar kind of encouragement aimed at submissions. I will do this more on the model of #1kTuesday, with a Facebook group and a hashtag. I am calling it #SubmitSunday – though in reality there will be no penalty for submitting on other days. The idea, though, is that you will know as you are spending some time on a Sunday morning, afternoon or evening working on submissions that there are others out there doing the same thing. Make time for it.

And when you are done, you can head on over to the Facebook group and enter your accomplishment. I will ask anyone who is a member of the group to submit each Sunday (or any day) what they did, then I will tally them every Monday. It could be “Submitted to x number of journals,” or “Submitted “so-and-so” piece to x journal” or it could be “Worked on a proposal for a writing grant/residency for one hour.” It could even be “Researched markets with x resource for an hour.” It’s okay to do research, but Extra Brownie Points will be awarded for those who are actually submitting work, and who can name the piece and pass along the market that they submitted to.

Occasionally I will share resources that I know of and trust, and I would encourage others to do the same – places where markets, contests and grants are listed that others will find handy. I always share this kind of information with my students and it is nothing but a good feeling. If you are an editor of a publication or director of a program that awards grants or residencies to writers, I would love to see you post the details in the group or simply with the hashtag on Twitter. Open reading periods, deadlines for contests, requests for proposals – all is game.

I have already started the Facebook group, so please join #SubmitSunday. You don’t have to be a Friend of mine on Facebook, and you can invite anyone you want. Also, use the #SubmitSunday hashtag on Twitter (follow me there at @LindaWonder if you don’t already), and tell your friends! I hope that you can join me!

I have been teaching classes at the Loft Literary Center for about five years now, and there is something that I always run into. These classes fall on the career side of things – how to promote yourself, how to build an online platform, how to use social media, how to find speaking opportunities, that type of thing.

Invariably, in any one of my classes, as we go around the group and do a little pre-class discovery, the same thing crops up. At least one person – and usually more than one – will indicate that the project they are working on, having written or at least hope to promote does not really qualify them as a writer. They always start out by saying, “I’m not a writer, but I wrote this book… “ Maybe it is a collection of stories their grandfather told, maybe a memoir about their childhood, maybe it is a series of essays on living in the northland. One woman collected and edited 2,000 of her mother’s letters, wrote introductions to each chapter, footnoted the whole thing, collected photos (including getting permission where necessary) and then told me she wasn’t a writer.

My response to them is always the same. “You are a writer. Get over it. Own it.” I feel like they will not make great strides in promoting their project until they take ownership of it and realize that it came out of their own head. Never mind that it was a collection of letters, or stories someone else told them on the front porch, or just a little column that they scribbled for the weekly newspaper. It’s all writing – fiction isn’t the only thing that counts – and I want them to accept that.

I have always written, and I have always self-identified as a writer. I always saw myself sitting at a desk writing. There was never any doubt that my career would have something to do with writing. But then, it often did not. I wrote copy. I wrote press releases. I wrote tons of blog posts, social media posts, and articles. Still, that’s writing. Except when someone asks what you do, and you say you are a writer, and their question is always, “Would I have read anything you’ve written?” And the answer is well, no, not unless you’ve read the Cold Weather Rule brochure for the Public Utilities Commission, or the many press kits that I’ve written over the past several years, or perhaps the series of job search posts I wrote over the span of a year and a half for a careers blog. And no, they hadn’t.

Still, I couldn’t blame them. Because I knew there was something else in me, something else brewing. I just didn’t know what. Imagine my surprise when I finally started writing a big project, and it felt like I was butting into the club.

The Writing Challenge

Oh sure, I’d taken my stabs at writing a novel. I had started several when I was younger. I even tried to write a play once. I did NaNoWriMo in 2009, and barely got half way before I realized that the inane dribble I was spouting was going nowhere. I just wasn’t feeling it. I always maintained that I was a poet and essayist first.

Then this past April, I did a blog post challenge. I wanted to kickstart this blog, and it was somewhat helpful in doing that. But most of all, what it taught me was that if you are going to write, and you need to write every day in order to write, then you had better make it a priority, and you had better do it first thing. And it’s helpful to have support, accountability, and check-ins. So that’s a great lesson learned.

Still, I didn’t have an idea for that great novel. Then one night I stayed up late to watch a show on PBS on one of my favorite topics – ancient peoples. This one was about a series of discoveries just made in the last couple years, of Neolithic villages in the north of the British Isles. At the very end, the host made a comment and used a phrase that seared itself right into my very brain. I watched the end of that show with my mouth hanging open. I knew that I had a story.

I thought about it for a few weeks. Then I saw the August Writing Challenge hashtag (#AugWritingChallenge) on Twitter (there are other months, too, just check the website). I went to the website and read the whole thing. It was already August 1, and I didn’t have time to write anything that night, so I started the next night. I had already written the opening scene (or at least the first scene that came to my mind) on a legal pad. I typed it out. I typed some more. I got over 1000 words that first day. And I’ve been loving it ever since.

Giving Yourself Permission

The idea is to write at least 500 words a day, every day, for the whole month. There is an online participation log, and shout outs on Twitter. I love the log. I get to see all those numbers marching across the row, for every day I have written. There are a few zeros on there, but there are far more that are over 1000 words, and I know it will take a while, but it feels great. And the shout outs are really sweet, too. What better for someone sitting alone in a room with the blinds drawn on a summer day?

And now, hey. Guess what? I’m writing. I’m writing nearly every day. I’m writing this novel, and I’m writing blog posts for this poor neglected blog, and articles on my Books column on Examiner.com, and things that I have long promised to other people.

But sometimes, when I post my word counts on Twitter with the hashtag, I still feel like I’m play-acting a little bit. Like maybe those ‘real’ authors out there are going to somehow call me on it. I fall into the old trap: “I’m not really a writer, but I wrote this book.”